(Photo courtesy of Sifu Renka)Recipes adapted from Making Artisan Chocolates by Andrew Garrison ShottsLavender Vanilla: I adapted the vanilla recipe from the molded chocolates section for this variation. A tablespoon of Zeron’s dried lavender infused the cream with an herbal-f...
First, this recipe makes a very small loaf of bread studded with a large quantity of almonds and figs. There are no instructions for an overnight rise, so after making up the dough, I put it in the fridge for about 4 hours, then punched it down, incorporated the fruit and nuts...
Recipes adapted from Making Artisan Chocolates by Andrew Garrison ShottsSalted Caramel: I’ve made these before and they turned out just as tasty as I remember them. One caveat is that the small amount of sugar you need to caramelize can easily burn, but you want it dark enough...
I subbed a bit of gluten-free flours in place of the all-purpose to use them up. Otherwise, I followed the recipe as written with great results. Overnight refrigeration didn’t make the yeasted batter rise too much. We didn’t take it out of the fridge to get the batter up to ro...
For a work potluck, I wanted to use up a large batch of olives (which I bought to make the fruitcake) by making tapenade, so I thought of making a loaf of bread to go along with it. The original recipe calls for thyme which the supermarket was out of (!); oregano seemed like a...
(The linked recipe is not exactly the one from the book, but it’s close.) The basic recipe made 8 servings, and I only needed two for last night’s dinner, so I decided on making a half recipe of the make-ahead version. In this recipe, the yolks are partially cooked by stirring...
Mom and I made some gingerbread from a recipe that she had used in previous years. The dough was easy to work with, but it was difficult to gauge how thick to roll them. Seeing that they didn’t spread very much in the oven, we packed them in pretty tightly. Unfortunately, the ...
For this last week of class, we started by making the farm dough. We used another levain that we prepared last week and which I had been maintaining in the fridge at home. During the final minute of kneading, we added an herb paste which coloured and flavoured the dough. A bit...
I made another batch of 18 muffins with the remainder of the sour cream plus some yogurt. I added two chopped Paula Red apples to the batter, and also a handful of dried cranberries and raisins (in separate batches to suit Dr. S) soaked in apple liqueur. A final topping of cin...
Dr. S held a Hannukah party on Friday and I wanted to make something for her bash, so I made a large batch of rugelach based on this recipe. The dough was prepared according to the recipe, but I deviated significantly for the filling. I spread the dough with sour cherry preser...
One of the stranger items Chef talked about on the first night of this class was a clay pot to be used later in the course. My partner graciously bought and prepared the terracotta containers, oiling and baking them at home so that they would be sealed. However, during class, ...
The inclusion of olives caught my eye in this recipe. It seemed like a good candidate for my annual fruitcake baking and was quite easy to make. Tasters weren’t able to detect the olives, wanted more alcohol and moistness, and one found it too sweet. I thought the flavour was ...
From a now defunct Globe and Mail magazine, I found this recipe and converted it into a gluten-free one by replacing the flour with my standard gluten-free mix. I forgot to add any xanthan gum though. This may have accounted for the substantial spread in the baked cookies, or ...
Both of Monday’s breads required long sponge fermentation times. We started by making the sponge for the stollen, a mixture of milk, yeast and flour. Chef increased the yeast by 10 g to speed up the process and placed our covered bowls in the warm proofing cabinet for an hour....
I based these chocolates on the Grand Marnier recipe from this book. My coworker gave me a generous amount of frozen yuzu peel from Japan. I took a heaping tablespoon, minced it and used it to infuse the cream. For added citrus flavour, I put a few drops of natural orange oil ...
I was able to find pastry flour (Bob’s Red Mill unbleached) so I used that in place of all-purpose. Five medium-sized organic Granny Smith apples were enough to cover this tart, but they were odd-shaped slices, especially the part around the core. Next time, I would use more a...
Lots of flavourings in this classic tiny cake recipe: orange blossom honey, orange blossom water and orange zest. There’s some ground almonds too, which Yard says she uses for flavour and lightness. The recipe says to chill the batter for 2 to 4 hours; I was tired after coming...
I brought the big bucket of starter dough to class on Monday night which we used to make the walnut bread. It was a bit on the dry side but the dough came together nicely. We added walnuts and raisins in the last few minutes of kneading (so they wouldn’t break up too much). Be...
The cast of characters in this recipe included apples (5 Spy, 3 Granny Smith) and kamut flour (filling in for spelt flour, who was absent from my fridge). The batter was pasty and was my first indication this cake’s texture might be off. Apples form a huge layer in the cake; t...
One of the first things Chef did was to hand out a revised version of last week’s New York Rye. As I had predicted, this recipe had more yeast and less rye flour. These loaves were much softer and much more edible than our initial versions.Monday’s class featured baguettes, so...
My father gave me a clipping from Maclean’s a while back describing “the best cookies in the world”. I totally missed the discussions about this cookie, as a recipe first appeared in the LA Times back in 2003. Anyway, I tried making it last night using the modified version in ...
I was planning to make the cinnamon-hazelnut chocolates but found my own blog post (!) so I altered the spicing of this recipe. Instead of cinnamon, I infused the cream with fresh ginger, added ground ginger (about 1 tsp) to the ganache and also some candied ginger puree. For ...
I made the filling earlier in the week, gently cooking 2.5 pounds each of Spy and Braeburn apples. After draining the cooked fruit in a colander, I refrigerated the mixture and let it come back to room temp before using it. Some candied ginger puree added to the filling gave i...
We’re the first class to take this brand new course, one our instructor said she spent 8 months developing! She originally wanted to call it Art of Breads 2 as she wouldn’t be able to cover things like flatbreads (e.g. naan) or griddle breads (e.g. English muffins) in such a s...
For the last class before I can obtain a Bakery Arts diploma, I’ll be taking the six-week course entitled International Breads.Week 1: Cheese and Onion and New York Rye Week 2: Olive Thyme Baguettes and Mountain BreadWeek 3: Walnut Bread and SchiacciataWeek 4: Hot Cross Buns a...
This is a brand-new book full of traditional and inspired Asian desserts. I tried making these baked doughnuts to use up some Spy apples and sweet potatoes. The batter contains evaporated milk and I substituted yogurt for buttermilk. After the initial rise, I made the mistake ...
This is the last bread I’m making this week with the starter. One interesting aspect of the mash recipe is the use of altus (soaked bread) which I made by taking cubes of the whole wheat mash bread and soaking it in water. Both the mash and soaker were very, very wet. Another ...
There’s a discussion near the bottom of this page about this loaf. I was looking for another bread that needed a whole wheat mother starter, so I made this rye bread. I used yogurt in the soaker, and molasses, caraway and fresh onion in the final dough. The rye starter was ver...
Both the soaker and the biga require potato water to soften and flavour the final bread. I added roasted garlic and freshly ground black pepper as suggested, as well as using chopped fresh rosemary. This dough was very soft to work with and did not rise that much. There is a w...
About a year and a half ago, I answered a call on Peter Reinhart’s blog to be a tester for an upcoming book about whole grains. The techniques were very new to me and I stuck it out for about a half a year of testing (you can see my results on Flickr). His book was finally pub...
An involved, weekday morning project that was ultimately very satisfying. I converted the basic recipe into a gluten-free one by replacing the flour with the same amount of a basic gluten-free mix and added a rounded ¼ tsp. of xanthan gum. Waffles might be the perfect candidat...
I haven’t even received this issue in the mail yet but there was enough buzz about the unorthodox crust recipe that I wanted to try it immediately. The short story: vodka. A discussion with the recipe’s author is insightful reading. Traditional techniques and recipes aren’t th...
Our final class began with a lot of activity as there were a lot of ingredients in the crusts for both pies. My job was to finely chop peanuts, which I spent almost a half hour doing. It took a long time (and with an unfamiliar knife) and I grumbled about not having a food pro...
I used the cream-milk combination and a Tahitian vanilla bean that I bought from here. What an easy recipe, no need to make a custard and deal with leftover whites. I left the bean in to infuse for a day and it really produced a great vanilla fragrance. While the ice cream doe...
Using leftover pie dough, I rolled out a large piece, enough to fit into my 11” tart pan. It was tough and seemed stiff. After a rest in the fridge, it puffed up during baking (I didn’t prick any holes) even though I used pie weights (dried beans, maybe I need heavier things)....
An easy class this week since we used the same crust and filling base for both pies. Since we didn’t prep the dough for this week in the last class, we started by making the chocolate crust. It was a very tender dough, rich with butter and coloured and flavoured with cocoa pow...
This cake is simple enough that I was able to make it on a weeknight evening in under an hour, plus baking time. I only had 1 cup of sour cream, so I used ½ cup of half-and-half cream, and compensated for the additional moisture with more flour. For the topping, I used walnuts...
I followed the master recipe but made a few changes, adding ground ginger to the custard and using maple sugar instead of white. I put a tiny bit of candied ginger puree on the caramel, and added some chopped dried cranberries that I had soaked in a mixture of 100% cranberry j...
A simple yeasted bread with a sweet-tart component in the form of chocolate chips and tiny cranberries. The authors call for freezing both the chips and fruit beforehand, presumably so they will not melt or get crushed during the gentle kneading of the dough. I used the smalle...
This week didn’t feature any sweet pies in the traditional sense. We started by rolling out the crust (made last week, using real butter this time) for the savoury pies. I tucked the overhang underneath the edge so that it would be thicker and be better able to hold a fluted e...
Using fresh pumpkin puree, I made a double batch of this seasonal ice cream for a mini-potluck at work where both tubs were quickly consumed. The brown sugar and spices gave it a deep, rich flavour (although a bit more of the spices wouldn’t have hurt). I particularly liked th...
This recipe features pumpkin puree in the batter, as well as seeds in the muffin and as a topping. It’s a bit more work than most recipes, as there is a separate streusel that needs to be made. I baked two pie pumpkins in the oven and pureed the flesh in a food processor (I’m ...
Wednesday’s class started off with us rolling out pie dough for both pies. We pricked and blind baked the one for lemon meringue, and I added some leaf cutouts to the pumpkin pie crust. To make the pumpkin pie filling, we whipped eggs and brown sugar for 15 minutes (!) until i...
I made this cake for work and started working on it earlier this week. The three Chocolate Orange Mousse Cake layers are flourless, using separately beaten yolks and whites to create lift. Flavour comes from orange extract and zest to which I added some orange oil as well. The...
With the leftover pear nectar and pear halves from the charlotte, I made up a batch of these easy muffins. My only changes were to omit the lemon zest and substitute unsweetened muesli for the granola. Not a lot of fat in these, just a few tablespoons of oil and egg yolks. The...
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in this event but I thought I would take part in the fig edition that Ivonne is hosting.My entry is a charlotte made with pears and figs from a recipe found in Desserts by Pierre Hermé by Dorie Greenspan. The cake recipes in this book ...
Wednesday was a whirlwind evening in which we made two different kinds of pies from scratch in just under 3 hours. First off, we made the cream cheese filling for the first pie which we poured into crusts made from dough we made and froze last week. Sandwiched in the middle wa...
The fresh Bartlett pears for this ice cream are briefly heated for a minutes. According to the authors, this destroys an enzyme which causes browning, even over time in the freezer. For some reason, my pears were still quite firm and not very sweet after sitting on the counter...
This recipe features melted white chocolate mixed into the dough, and butterscotch chips and hazelnut halves studding the cookie. The freshly made dough was easy to scoop and portion using my scoop, and the cookies baked to a smooth, rounded finish. However, after a day in the...
This is the last compulsory course I need for the Bakery Arts certificate, and I have been avoiding it, not because of the course content though. There is a certain instructor who usually teaches it and I didn’t want to have another class with her, so I’ve postponed taking Art...
I’m taking another class at George Brown, this time six weeks worth of pies.Week 1: Custard-Filled Phyllo Pie Week 2: Streusel Week 3: Pumpkin and Lemon Meringue Week 4: Quiche and Boston Cream Week 5: Pecan and Walnut-Raisin Week 6: Chocolate-Peanut Butter and Key LimeMy rati...
With the leftover rugelach dough from a double batch made a few months ago, I baked 16 of these cookies this morning. The filling had a lot of melted butter which leaked out during baking. I like the cranberry-walnut combination along with the allspice, but I would definitely ...
The Bartlett pears I bought from the supermarket were pretty green, but I thought poaching them in the white wine, orange peel, cinnamon and ginger mixture would soften them up. This assumption was incorrect, they stayed somewhat crunchy, even after baking. I didn’t want to bu...
Yes, it’s a repeat. My fridge is being replaced this weekend and I had some 10% cream to use up. Also, the butter had been sitting out for a couple of hours but I decided to use it in that state anyway: I smeared it into the oat-flour mixture. This variation is also a winner, ...
Just before I finished mixing up the batter, I realized it was quite wet because I forgot… the flour! Whoops. These scones were pretty bland and dry, even though I used half-and-half cream instead of milk. I soaked the cherries in some Kirsch but they were still quite sour. Mo...
I made two delicious batches of pear crisp this week, one with Oat Topping and the Triple-Ginger variation as well. Due to some extenuating circumstances, I didn’t have any almonds or pecans as called for, but made the topping with cashews which made it quite rich, although no...
I thought I had some heavy cream in the fridge, so this would be a good way to use it up, but it had gone bad. But I continued ahead anyway, using all milk, and adding a bit more butter to the dough. It was very wet, so it stuck to the cutting board I used to pat it out. The b...
I accidentally bought a can of tomato soup on Friday, so I found this unconventional way to make use of it. The recipe is quite basic, the only thing I did differently was to add the soup alternately with the flour mixture. Also, most of the cakes and loaves I make use butter,...
I made a full batch of pie dough using a stand mixer, but the paddle did not do a good job of reducing the shortening to small pieces, so I had to finish it up by hand with a pastry blender. After sifting the flour over the yogurt mixture, there were lumps which I smushed by d...
The batter was quite liquid when I finished mixing it, but I let it sit for about 5 minutes as I knew the oat bran would absorb the excess moisture. These muffins were delicious, a smooth texture with yummy dried fruit and nut. My only criticism is the abundance of leavener; I...
A very easy recipe to make, start to finish in under an hour. The biscuits contain no butter, with the only fat coming from the cream. The dough was a bit dry, so I kneaded it a few times to distribute the moisture. Surprisingly, the biscuits were quite flaky and tender, but v...
I saw some Charentais melons for sale from Thames River Melons at the Square One Farmer’s Market last weekend. These melons are sometimes known as European canteloupes, smaller than their North American cousins. I was a bit disappointed however that they weren’t all that sweet...
A nice easy cake spiced up with cardamom and cinnamon, both in the streusel and in the batter. The plums are covered completely so their liquid is absorbed by the topping. The toffee glaze is just brown sugar, butter, cream and vanilla and takes 5 minutes to make. It went pret...
I made this cake using Ontario blue plums (Italian blue? Not sure…) that seemed a bit on the large size. Instead of a food processor, I did the whole thing by hand. Ground almonds are a staple in my freezer so I didn’t have to chop the nuts with a knife. I used a pastry blende...
The “batter” of this cake resembles a soft, crumbly pie dough and I contemplated adding more milk. However, from the comments on the original post, it seemed to work out for several other people so I left it alone. 500 g of apricots is quite a lot, and I was pleased with how m...
The dough for this bread is quite heavy and sticky so I’m glad I used the mixer to knead it. I tried to use a minimal amount of flour, and after about 10 minutes on #2 speed, the dough cleared the sides of the bowl but was still quite tacky. The bread has a nice peanut-wheat t...
The linked recipe directions are quite different than what the book describes. For the flours, I used whole wheat durum flour, and a mix of bread flour and AP flour. My KitchenAid did all the kneading work (at 3rd speed). I did the first rise overnight in the fridge after whic...
IMPORTANT! There is a mistake in the early printings of this book for this recipe. You should use 2/3 cups water plus ¾ cup sour cream in the sponge. See the errata list for details. This bread is a variation of the Basic Hearth Bread I made last week. I made the sponge and le...
The healthy aspect of this muffin is in the use of whole wheat flour and wheat germ. I forgot I had regular whole wheat flour and ended up using some durum whole wheat flour. I also didn’t have crushed pineapple on hand, substituting chopped fresh Rainier cherries. Fortunately...
For the sponge, I used kamut flour as well as some stoneground whole wheat flour, and let it ferment overnight as recommended for the “ultimate full flavour”. Beranbaum addresses the issue of kneading dough on #4 speed with the Kitchenaid mixer (whose manual says to only use #...
Recipes from Frozen Desserts by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir Notes on Maple Syrup Pecan Ice Cream: The one unusual thing about this recipe is that the cream/egg mixture is baked in ramekins in a water bath. One thing that amused me in the recipe is the line about using a go...
These brownies were for a special occasion: Happy Birthday M! I made this using Cacao Barry’s Tanzanie, a 75% cocoa dark chocolate, instead of the mix of semisweet and unsweetened chocolate called for in the recipe. The brownie contains cocoa powder, a quarter pound of butter,...
Everyone is talking about this new ice cream book and some of the flavours do sound interesting, but I was looking for a frozen yogurt recipe and found this one. You can barely call it a recipe as it only has three ingredients: yogurt, sugar and vanilla extract. The mixture wa...
I got a deal at the farmer’s market on four pints of raspberries, nearly the last of the season. This pie crust gave me a bit of trouble as it cracked a lot during rolling, but I kneaded the top crust a bit more and it held together much better. For the liqueur, I used Southbr...
Another resident in my freezer was a container of frozen passion fruit pulp which I scooped from several ripe specimens a few months ago (or was it longer than that?). I used a food processor to free the pulp from the seeds (which stayed intact) and combined it with fresh mang...
The next item up from my freezer was a bag of frozen strawberries. I thawed and drained the berries, and combined them with rhubarb to make this pie. In my sleepy state of my mind, I forgot to add any lemon juice into the filling, but the pie still tasted fine. Instead of flou...
A Google search led me to this financier recipe which I thought would be a nice dessert for Canada Day. I only had 8 egg whites, so I made four-fifths of the recipe. After mixing the egg whites, confectioner’s sugar and almonds together, the batter was lumpy so I used a hand b...
An early morning project on one of the hottest days of the summer. This is a fussy recipe (like many Cook’s Illustrated ones are) that calls for freezing the butter and grating it, and folding the dough similar to doing puff pastry turns. The method ensures that the blueberrie...
The recipe calls for grinding sliced almonds, but I already had ground almonds so I used: 1 ¾ cups sliced, ground == 124 g ground (based on 1 cup of sliced almonds weighing 70 g). This is very simple to make, as it uses the food processor to combine everything. I was a little ...
You must skim the entire process of how this muffin recipe was derived: over a dozen trials before he was satisfied! Evidence that this recipe lives up to its name: using orange zest, orange yogurt, orange extract and orange oil in the muffin; mashing the orange zest into the ...
Continuing my freezer purge, I had a tiny bit of strained raspberry puree so I tried making another chocolate from this book. The flavour is predominantly raspberry, but the rosewater was too subtle. I used at least 5 drops, but would add even more next time. The raspberry vis...
I had about 2 cups of mango puree in the freezer so I decided to make this for a BBQ I was invited to. The recipe is pretty simple; my only additions were a bit of ground almonds in the crust and a reduction in the sugar for the filling as the fruit was quite sweet. I also mad...
I did not have the tiny pequín chilies so I took a morita chili and infused the milk and cream with it, then minced it to add to the mixture. My only other deviation was to omit the almonds, as I felt they would compete with the other flavours. And what flavours: when you put ...
I baked the cake in an 8” tin for about 10 minutes longer than indicated. It turned out to be very sturdy indeed and was easy to slice, although there was some egginess and density in the very centre. After putting it all together, I was a little disappointed that the layers d...
Instead of making the chocolate genoise, I pulled a package from my freezer labelled, “8” devil’s food cake, Dec 23, 2006”, leftover from this Christmas cheesecake. There was still a lot of work to do, as the pistachios required some preparation: shelling, blanching, slipping ...
A hot classroom awaited us for the final installment of this cookie course. We started with the chocolate cookies, a regular chocolate chip cookie dough loaded with white chocolate chips, chocolate chunks and pecans. Chef told us to reduce the sugar in the recipe by almost hal...
Shh, I have some overdue cream cheese that’s been sitting around in the fridge for too long, some chopped pecans taken home from cookie class a few weeks ago, a jar of jam that I’m trying to get rid of, and leftover chocolate that’s been melted and re-tempered countless times....
I’m now down to 8 egg whites in my freezer after using 13 to make this cake. The addition of toasted coconut provided a bit of interest in this otherwise boring white cake. My tube pan is 10” across at the top and was completely full; I don’t know how this recipe is supposed t...
Last night’s class was a model of efficiency (or maybe a model of simplicity): we were done in under two hours! Our first cookie was a macaroon, made with a standard recipe plus the addition of a bit of ground almonds and lemon zest. We only had dessicated coconut to work with...
An interesting note in the recipe says that it’s hard to make an ice cream with a strong white chocolate flavour, as the texture often becomes grainy with the addition of too much chocolate. Their guideline is to keep the white chocolate below 15% of the total ingredients (by ...
This is the corn blini recipe with the addition of blueberries. I used a mix of lemon yogourt and whole milk in place of buttermilk. Letting the batter sit for about 15 minutes helped to thicken it, as the cornmeal absorbed the liquid. When I scattered berries onto the batter ...
Trying to make butter-rich icebox cookies in a warm lab was an interesting exercise this week. We started with the pinwheel dough. After it came together in the mixer, we took half out and kneaded in some orange oil which Chef brought in herself. The original recipe called for...
A friend of mine found a delicious cherry compote from France at a grocery in North York and kindly bought me a jar. I used some to make these bars; since they weren’t tart cherries, I added a few tablespoons of strained raspberry purée to add acidity and keep with the colour ...
Our first cookie this week, Lemon Blossoms, is better known as a thumbprint cookie. We made the simple shortbread-like dough (butter, icing sugar, lemon juice, pastry flour) and kept it in the fridge. While that dough was firming up, we started on the next cookie, Peanut Butte...
My freezer had something like 30 egg whites, so I took one of the containers out a while ago to make financiers. This thick batter contains pumpkin puree, browned butter and spices, surefire ingredients that would deliver flavour. After mixing it all together, I let it sit in ...
For Cinco de Mayo, I decided to make an unusual truffle from this book. It calls for pineapple puree, Mojito-flavoured liqueur, dried pineapple and chile powder. While I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter, I tried to keep the spirit of the chocolates intact. I briefly infu...
We started off this class by mixing up the spritz dough. It was very tender, due to both shortening and butter in the mix, and was flavoured nicely with orange zest. The cocoa powder gave it a nice dark colour. Using a #6 star tip, we piped out rosettes, fingers and shells. Th...
A Google search found a post I made to a bread mailing list back in 2003 when I first tried this bread. This time around, I used canned pumpkin (less moisture then fresh squash) and I have a stand mixer, so no problems with kneading the soft dough. Alterations: all-purpose flo...
I bought a can of Kesar mango pulp to make this ice cream. It’s quick because it doesn’t involve boiling milk, instead, using a mix of evaporated milk and whipping cream. There’s way too much sugar, this is tooth-achingly sweet. However, the texture is soft and the mango stand...
Our first cookie last night was chocolate chip, the quintessential cookie. The recipe was for a soft, chewy cookie, so to that end, pastry flour was used for tenderness. After mixing up the dough with a paddle, we used a #24 ice cream scoop to make uniform balls of dough. I li...
I wasn’t too pleased with these chocolates. There isn’t a very strong orange flavour, only alcohol. Steeping some orange peel with the cream would have helped. I found it best to freeze the filling for at least two hours before cutting squares. Otherwise, the ganache tends to ...
I’ve made biscotti many times in the past, but this class held some surprises for me. First, we made espresso biscotti. A lot of traditional versions don’t contain any fat, save for that from eggs, but this one involved creaming butter and sugar. Flavourings included orange ze...
Just a simple combination of some leftover components
To make the cognac-soaked raisins, the recipe calls for setting the alcohol aflame, which I lit using a strand of dry capellini (thanks to Cook’s Illustrated for this unorthodox tip). The brownie base calls for nuts but I left them out for the sake of a taster’s allergies. On ...
For the shell, I used Cacao Barry Cuba Pure Origin 70%, a dark chocolate with a noticeably fruity taste, almost like extra-virgin olive oil. The caramel centre is made with white chocolate, and tastes like butterscotch. Tempering is getting better, as you can see from the shin...
This cake began on Sunday April 1st when I mixed up the batter which included spices (star anise, cinnamon, ginger, mace, cloves and white pepper), rye flour, candied orange zest and rum; there is no fat, dairy or eggs. One of the key components of this cake/bread hybrid is ho...
After a brief hiatus from classes, I decided to take another course needed for the Bakery Arts Diploma. Wednesday night’s class is being taught by a woman who’s been a pastry chef at the Metropolitan Hotel for over a dozen years. She seemed to know the large majority of all th...
A very time-consuming (>6 h) but ultimately satisfying bread. This recipe starts with a sponge, then a long first rise (3 h) then a 2 h proof. Lots of lemon zest, milk, butter and a few eggs make this an enriched dough full of flavour. And the filling, oh the filling: four ...
The spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, white pepper) and honey (Dutchman’s Gold Summer Blossom) are the flavourings for this classic French cookie. I bought the madeleine tins from Design & Realisation. I noticed this recipe calls for a hot oven (425°F) while all the othe...
One look at the ingredient list shows this to be a rich full-fat ice cream: 2 cups each of 10% and 35% cream plus 6 egg yolks! The orange flavour comes from both zest — steeped in the cream plus more added afterwards — and fresh juice. Medjool dates are incredible (I’ve never ...
I made this bread dairy-free by substituting almond milk. This is another recipe from this book that doesn’t use the plain GF flour mix, but a different proportion of brown rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch. So much for premixing a big container. I used Medjool date...
My ingredient choices: mix of low fat cow and soy milk; 1 cup cake and pastry flour plus ½ cup hard whole wheat flour; Granny Smith apples. The yeasted batter (with raw egg and milk) needs to rest for 6 to 8 hours, so I put it near an open window where it wasn’t too warm. The ...
The recipe conveniently omits the time it takes to reduce the cooked papaya puree down to 1 cup: about 40 minutes! After enduring hot, tropical fruit sputtering onto my arms, I thought baby food might be a shortcut for next time. Dried pineapples are very expensive, more so if...
My second attempt at this recipe, after a disappointing trial a few months ago using Bob’s Red Mill muesli. Actually, I had intended to make this using Kashi GOLEAN Cereal but the food processor turned it into a powder with some hard nuggets leftover. Instead, I bought Good Fo...
This isn’t a gluten-free cookbook, but as far as I can tell, this recipe contains no gluten. I used organic Orin apples from BC which have a subtle pear flavour. Poaching the apple balls in spiced cider gave them a deep flavour, and they make a nice accompaniment. The nutty ca...
To make chopping the milk chocolate easier, I melted it, then spread it very thin on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. For the nuts, I used both ground hazelnuts and chopped walnuts. Because the dough has a sandy texture, I found it easiest to use my hands to press it toget...
This tiny book, published in 1992, has a lot of ideas for a full breakfast spread, taking inspiration from morning traditions from around the world. The French toast recipe comes from the section on Provence. I didn’t use the extra egg whites, and used raisin challah instead o...
An easy recipe to mix up. The dough spreads out a lot, so make sure you leave lots of room on the cookie sheet. Let the partially baked logs cool sufficiently so that they are firm enough to slice with a sharp knife. I let the biscotti dry out for another half hour with the ov...
I used organic Pippin apples, a small green tart fruit. Even though I didn’t use a non-stick pan, there was no problem inverting the pancake onto a plate. I used a mix of whipping cream and 2% milk in place of half-and-half, making it a bit richer. The method is very hands-off...
I made a half-batch in an 8×8” pan, substituting wheat germ for oat bran, and adding a bit of shredded coconut, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries to the basic recipe. These tasted much better the next day, less floury and raw tasting. Definitely not like store-bought grano...
I think there’s a misprint in the book: the yield is supposed to be two 9×5×3” cakes, but as you can see, the loaves came out very short. The Classic Pound Cake recipe a few pages back uses the same amount of flour, butter and eggs and makes one loaf. I sent Nick a question on...
Some more lessons learned about making artisan chocolates: lining the pan with plastic wrap doesn’t work very well when the surface is non-stick; freezing the ganache filling too long means the melted chocolate “foot” will set immediately making it hard to get an even thicknes...
To use up some yogurt I had (and to make a fine accompaniment for the white chicken chili I made for dinner tonight), I tried this cornbread from a book dedicated to the subject. It’s a pretty funny read, as the author had four goals in writing the book, the third of which is,...
I used frozen blueberries to make these scones (more leftover ingredients: 35% cream). As I was stirring this gluten-free dough together, I was thinking about how you don’t have to worry about overmixing (which causes toughness) since there’s no gluten to be formed. I ended up...
I made a double recipe (162 in2) to use up some whipping cream and chocolate I had leftover. This fit nicely in two 8×8” non-stick pans (128 in2) plus one 6×6” pan (36 in2) with removable bottom. I toasted the ground hazelnuts which helped with the nutty flavour of the base; i...
I used a full 5 tbsp. of water in the pâte brisée which made it easier to roll out, but resulted in a cracker-like crust. The frangipane was very strongly flavoured (of peanuts!) and was a deep green-brown in colour. It’s hard to tell if a fig is ripe, but after baking in the ...
Blech, these tasted untasty. The Bob’s flour is very dark, and turned out some angry looking pancakes. I like trying new grains and recipes, but 100% buckwheat may be too much for me, or I haven’t found the right recipe. There is no sweetener in the ingredients, so eat these w...
A new organic grocery has opened up in Port Credit, Mississauga’s “village by the lake”: Planet Organic. This is a Canadian chain with several locations out west, one in Halifax and they’ve just opened this first store in Ontario. A cashier I talked to today said they were pla...
Dan-D Foods (makers of Dan-D-Pack stuff) has unsulphured dried apples which I used for this cake, along with some Ontario apple cider and leftover unsweetened applesauce. The prep for this cake is time-consuming, as well as using a lot of bowls. In a nod to healthiness, I adde...
I used the leftover sweetened strawberry puree from the chocolates to make this cake. My only substitutions were using sunflower oil instead of almond oil, and adding a few drops of strawberry essence to the batter. It took a full hour before the cake was fully baked. Moist wi...
Boy, these chocolates taught me a lot about the art of chocolate making. I started with a recipe for the strawberry pâte de fruit from eGullet which uses regular (Pomona’s universal) pectin, rather than the “g” pectin called for in the book. I don’t keep salted butter in my fr...
My uncle gave me a copy of a recipe from a magazine just before I left Hong Kong this summer. Baked sago pudding is often served in dim sum restaurants, and I remember a family friend making a very tasty version of it too. The sago must be soaked overnight, or, as this recipe ...
Using some leftover lemon mint that I had, I left it in the water for couple of hours before making the sorbet base. I didn’t have crème de cacao so I used Talea amaretto cream instead; some peppermint oil helped to boost the mint flavour too, as the fresh mint wasn’t so fresh...
I’ve been wondering how a yeasted bread would be without gluten, so I tried this recipe this week. It doesn’t take long to make because there’s no proofing stage, just the initial one hour fermentation. For the fruit, I used raisins, apples and apricots. I needed the full one ...
With all the leftover milk chocolate, I decided to make another batch from the book. I was in a rush and as a result, the tempering and molding were quite sloppy. I let the excess chocolate drip over a rack, but didn’t scrape it clean. As a result, when I sealed the filled cho...
My first recipe from a new book on chocolate making. I used a mix of milk chocolate from Lindt (unknown %) and Callebaut (34%). The molding instructions tell you to invert the mold briefly on parchment; I think this is key to getting a thin shell as the excess chocolate drips ...
I used goat’s milk yogurt and wasn’t able to detect its flavour; I also grated the apple instead of dicing it. These were fantastic, full of flavour and low-fat (unusual in a waffle) to boot. Big Al thought the stone-ground cornmeal I used could have used some toasting. A defi...
This tried-and-true recipe is a favourite of mine because of the intense, pure citrus flavour in the finished product. But I’ve never liked the whipping cream that goes into it so I decided to try a lower fat variation. I made two batches this weekend: one using Liberté goat’s...
These muffins also use the basic baking mix from the book, but add almond flour and coconut. Instead of raspberry preserves (which I did not have), I added a dab of Bonne Maman peach jam in the centre. They are a little crumbly, as expected. Big Al thought they weren’t too dry...
I soaked a bunch of hard, dried-out dates in bourbon overnight during which they softened nicely and absorbed all the alcoholic goodness. My Fuyu persimmons were so ripe they were almost liquid, so I used the smaller amount of sugar. A half recipe fit nicely into my 8.5” non-s...
I used rice milk and omitted the cinnamon sugar. The batter mixed up easily and looked a bit runny, almost like a thick cake batter. I used a toothpick to test for doneness, adding five extra minutes to be safe. The muffins are moist with a very fine crumb. There are no “off”...
Wheat flour is a pretty essential staple in the baker’s kitchen. When mixed with water, it forms gluten to provide structure to all kinds of things from cakes to muffins to phyllo. The lovely Big Al is sensitive to gluten and is trying to reduce her consumption of dairy, soy a...
With all that leftover buttercream, I reluctantly decided to make some cupcakes. Changes from the linked cupcake recipe: halved quantities to make 12 large cupcakes, blood orange instead of regular, plain milk curdled with a squeeze of lemon instead of buttermilk, 2 eggs inste...
I couldn’t find passion fruit puree so I just skipped the coulis. To get a half cup of key lime juice, you need almost an entire mesh bag of fruit (over a dozen). The recipe for the graham crust makes too much, so the crust is pretty thick; I also should have dissolved the gra...
Using the gingerbread macarons recipe as a base, I omitted all the spices and molasses, replacing them with 4 tablespoons of mango powder. My oven racks were in the wrong positions, so the cookies browned too quickly, resulting in a very chewy macaron. I piped them too large (...
I ground the very oily nuts with the sugar to prevent them from turning into a wet paste. Even though I used salted macadamias, they didn’t affect the cookies’ taste. Instead of all honey, I used some syrup I had leftover from a jar of preserved stem ginger. These cookies are ...
